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Consciousness and the Paranormal

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Soupie, in a subsequent post you wrote: "To me, Green vs Greenish, or g vs G, represents the distinction between objective and subjective, where Green represents the objective, physical radiation, and Greenish represents the subjective, mental experience of the objective, physical radiation."

Would you say that only the EM radiation or frequencies are 'real' (because they can be measured objectively), or would you agree that the parts of the color spectrum that humans (bees, dragonflies, dolphins, etc.) generally see (and respond to) are also 'real' aspects of the phenomenal world in which we and they find ourselves living?

ps, thanks for the compliment about locating information; in that case, as I recall, I simply put 'matter, energy, information' in the search box.
 
The paper I quoted the introduction to above, assessing how green and greenishness get into the experienced world, includes this ramifying statement:

"We will pursue the understanding of information as a universal structure that is fully extensionally obtained from finite physical interactions.

Note that, such an understanding may also demystify a kind of the bootstrapping process of information extraction from the universe. From the extensional viewpoint of this study, as already mentioned, information is naturally considered to be essentially relative to the (information receiving) system, the same as physical interactions are essentially relative. Information relative to the system implies the existence of the context, that is, another referred information within the system. But, then, how can a system articulate the universe without any contextual information (i.e., so to speak, criteria), at the most fundamental level of, or, at the very beginning of, information process? In other words, how can a system have information of its own without any presupposed another information? Though this study might be very focused and not general enough, it may be considered as an attempt to understand information from such an absolutely relative viewpoint."

That relative viewpoint on information accords well with phenomenological philosophy, which does not take nature, the lived world, or being as fully given in any experience. For any experiencer (living sentient being) only parts or aspects of what-is in local reality -- and possibly in the universe, reaching us through holographic informational entanglement -- come to attention, draw the experiencer toward them, inspire feeling, interaction, and in our case (and probably that of some other 'higher animals') thought. The visible, palpable world calls out the experiencer. All ideas about the world reached by thinking on earth are brought into being by the pressure of a reality that feels as if it is 'other' . . . 'outer' from our intrinsic point of view. Some human thinking increases the sense of our distance from 'objective reality'; other human thinking presses through to the recognition of our interdependence with the physical world (which would be unlighted, a dark and inconsequential place, without the vital but partial presence brought into it by awareness, consciousness and mind.) One day Wallace Stevens felt this way about it:


July Mountain

We live in a constellation
Of patches and of pitches,
Not in a single world,
In things said well in music,

On the piano and in speech,
As in the page of poetry-
Thinkers without final thoughts
In an always incipient cosmos.

The way, when we climb a mountain,
Vermont throws itself together.
 
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Constance said:
Very interesting. I’m familiar with the information in your first quote but the case described in the second quote is new to me. Tell me, what do each (or both) of these pieces of information mean to you? That is, how do you weigh the significance of each one, or integrate them if you do?

I believe how we subjectively experience the world is not how it objectively is. I think our bodies (body-self) filter, integrate, and interpret the pure information of reality into a stream of consciousness (mental-self).

Since information begins (so far as we now know) in the quantum substrate, subsequently guiding or influencing, enabling, the development of complex systems in the universe and the emergence of life evolving to consciousness and mind in humans, where do you locate what you refer to as the pure information of reality? Is all physical information pure and is it alone significant in your view?

How the blind gentleman is able to correctly paint colors onto his paintings I don't know. From what I read, he uses his hands to feel what the trees "look" like. I wasn't able to find anything about how he determines what colors the trees are nor how he is able to mix these colors. Is it possible he can sense colors with his fingers? According to the article, his visual cortex is used to help with his tactile sense. Can he sense colors tactilely? Or does someone simply tell him what colors the tree is? It said in the article he makes the paintings himself.

It or derivations of it are used a few times in this excellent but inconclusive article:

What Phenomenal Consciousness is Like

[A]n example of a Blockean “experiential property” will be useful. Consider visual experiences (in good light) of cucumbers, limes, green peppers, grass, and so on. These experiences saliently resemble each other in respect of “what it’s like” to undergo them; they accordingly share an experiential property, call it ‘G’. ... Sometimes a property like G is called a ‘phenomenal character’, a ‘qualitative character’, or a ‘quale’. The last two expressions are used in this way in Levine 2001; in the additional terminology of that book, G is “greenishness”.

Would you post the link to that article? I'd like to read it.

To me, Green vs Greenish, or g vs G, represents the distinction between objective and subjective, where Green represents the objective, physical radiation, and Greenish represents the subjective, mental experience of the objective, physical radiation.

Actually this greenish business is a good example of the confluence, compresence, of subjectivity and objectivity in nature, demonstrating our inability to radically separate these poles of 'reality'. What is given physically is EM radiation; what is experienced is a world in technicolor, differing to degrees among humans, bees, and other living beings, differing also among humans. Both the subjective and objective poles of the experienced world are parts of the reality we attempt to understand in science and philosophy.

The hard problem of consciousness, as I understand it, is understanding how objective radiation and organisms can produce subjective experiences. Some philosophers hold that subjective experience must be composed of a non-physical, dual substance, others think it's an illusion that doesn't really exist, and I think something along the lines of Tonini and IIT that subjective experience "emerges" from information that has been uniquely filtered, integrated, and interpreted by systems such as brains.

Can you identify the motivation you share with Tonini and neuroscientists in general to reduce our and other animals' lived experience to exchanges and integrations of coded information taking place only inside the brain case?

Perhaps asking why subjective experience emerges from information that is uniquely filtered, integrated, and interpreted is similar to asking why liquidity emerges from groups of H2O molecules. [Again, I believe the subjective experience that emerges from uniquely filtered, integrated, and interpreted isn't then experienced by a mental-subject, I believe it is a mental-subject.]

I don't think the brain in itself, encased in the skull, is capable of 'interpreting the world' as it is intimately known (lived) by living organisms, as it inspires them with desire and will, the development of altruistic behaviors, and in some cases deep and lifelong personal attachments to certain others of their own species and also of other species. It makes no sense to me to attempt to reduce all this to the status of abstract information computed in the brain.

On the other hand, it's possible subjective experience is adaptive and that brains came to produce it via the long process of evolution. Chalmers doesn't seem to think subjective experience is adaptive, as he believes Zombies could function just like humans, but I'm skeptical of this.

I don't think he really thinks that. It was a thought experiment he set up to make the point that something further develops in human consciousness (by implication also other consciousness in animals) beyond the physically organized and implemented body.
 
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Boomerang, sorry to respond so late. I lost a day there. I had asked what you meant by the term 'artificial' in your preceding post: "I start with the assumption that there can be no self-awareness that is not continually grounded in ongoing processes of the universe at large. This means consciousness is a fundamental property of all reality, with individuated awareness of the self as an individuated entity, separate from the larger conscious universe, an artificial but necessary construct of our brains." You replied:

Artificial inasmuch as such a demarcation may be a kind of illusion produced by specific neural mechanisms configured to enhance survivability of the individual organism. But only peripheral when speculating about the universe as a larger and ultimately non-individuated consciousness. Whether it is real or illusory may depend solely on which level we choose to look.


Thanks for clarifying that. I don't think your hypothesis is unreasonable, but I don't understand why believing in the existence of consciousness at large in the universe would not support for you the reality of individually experienced consciousness in human beings and many animals. That is, why would the conviction that one is indeed conscious have to be explained as an illusion produced neurologically to inspire an instinct for survival? Conscious animals learn by experience about many dangers they face (beyond being taught about some of them by their parents).

By wrong, I mean wrong in the sense that it may not be well supported by best evidence in current neurological research. Like most of us, I rely on interpretations of raw data simplified and condensed for public consumption. But my impression is that science is beginning to identify specific neural networks dedicated to our sense of 'self'.

I think that alone would not signify that individual consciousness does not exist as such. Neural nets can be understood as merely correlates of experience and thought, consciously experienced and intended.



This is tougher to support. But a biologically based sense of personal boundaries would seem necessary for individual survival. Ancient man feeling a metaphysical "oneness' with the tiger encountered on the trail would probably achieve gastrointestinal union with the tiger as well. And I come back to relatively recent research in real time brain imaging that seems to indicate anatomical structures dedicated to defining boundaries of 'self'.

That sounds familiar. It would be good if we had a link to a paper or report concerning what is being claimed on the basis of those structures. It seems to me that the long evolution of species would explain such structures, and that they would not in themselves rule out the presence of consciousness and mind in more advanced species.

Another clue is the cross-cultural universality of 'self' throughout history. Behaviors universally observed in the human family, especially before the age of global communication, are more likely to be attributable to biological expression than to learned conditioning. Although, we must keep in mind that the expression of biologically based behaviors (instincts) are always shaped and moderated by learning (especially during critical developmental periods in childhood) and by the larger cultural context.

I don't think anyone would argue with the reality of biologically evolved instinctive behaviors and their being taught to offspring. I still don't see how this rules out the reality of individual enactive conscious in our species and many others.
 
@Soupie Your mental-self isn't experiencing Greenish, your mental-self is composed of Greenish.

@Constance This is a novel theory so far as I know. What is the evidence and/or reasoning on which you make the above claim, highlighted in blue? How does the greenish part of the brain become greenish, and does it show up in fMRI? And what persuades you that a different -- conscious -- part of the brain contemplates the greenish part of the brain?
It's not the brain (body-self) that is greenish, but the mind (mental-self).

I've just contemplated this for a few minutes, and I'm not sure how better to explain it. I think it is a novel concept, or perhaps the way I am phrasing it is novel, haha.

Environment + Body-Self = Mental-Self

Environment + Organism = Subjective Experience AKA Phenomenal Consciousness

I believe that some organisms - their body-self - interacts with the environment and produces a mental-self. All this mental-self is composed of is a stream of qualia.

However, I believe that other organisms - their body-self - interacts with the environment and produces a mental-self that is composed of a stream of qualia, but also - additionally - a cognitive mental-self that is able to create and make meaning via use of symbols.

@Constance So you are convinced that Tononi has the full account of consciousness/mind/brain in his IIT theory? I'm wondering why Tononi refers to 'experience' when so far as I have seen he does not deal with experience in any ordinary sense of the term but rather as something that takes place in interactions of 'information' in the brain without any reference to the body. Maybe you can explain this to me, and if so I hope you will. Tononi also uses the term 'qualia', though it's not clear in his system how they arise as experienced qualities.
As I've said several times, I do not think Tonono has offered a full account of consciousness. And as I've already explained, he does address qualia. Indeed (as I already said) he directly addresses qualia and seeks to explain how they are produced by the brain. If you'd like, I can go back a few posts and find the response that I offered previously. However, you apparently did not find it satisfying, so I don't think that would be helpful.

As I understand it, Tononi believes that qualia are Integrated Information.

Consider the following "scene":

There is a sea of moving particles. There is no color, sound, smell, texture, or pressure. However, within this sea of moving particles are some that are packed closer together and interacting with one another - we could call these clusters of differentiated particles "systems." All the particles in this sea are interacting with one another - bumping, colliding, and transferring energy.

Locally, there is one (relatively) large, round system of particles. On top of this large system of particles is a drastically smaller system of particles, and in front of this smaller system of particles is an again drastically smaller system.

The medium-sized system of particles is interacting with the sea of particles of which it is composed and in which it is immersed. In particular, it is interacting with the large-sized system of particles and the small-sized system of particles. These interactions with the differentiated systems produce differentiated information.

The medium-sized system of differentiated particles is able to gather the differentiated information it receives from the small-sized differentiated system of particles through the sea of particles. The medium-sized system itself is composed of many sub-systems of differentiated particles. These sub-systems filter, integrate, and interpret this information which is then integrated into a single, unified stream of Integrated Information.

This stream of Integrated Information is a beautiful, sunny, green park with a blue flower on the ground a few feet away.
 
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It's not the brain (body-self) that is greenish, but the mind (mental-self).

I've just contemplated this for a few minutes, and I'm not sure how better to explain it. I think it is a novel concept, or perhaps the way I am phrasing it is novel, haha.

Environment + Body-Self = Mental-Self

Environment + Organism = Subjective Experience AKA Phenomenal Consciousness

I believe that some organisms - their body-self - interacts with the environment and produces a mental-self. All this mental-self is composed of is a stream of qualia.

Tononi uses the term 'qualia' but I still have not found a clear description of what he's talking about in using the term. If you can quote the passage were you find such a description, would you do that when you get a chance? Thanks.

Also, does he characterize the point in evolution where he thinks organisms that have "Subjective Experience AKA Phenomenal Consciousness" also develop the capacity to become "a mental-self," which you (or Tononi?) define as follows: "All this mental-self is composed of is a stream of qualia." The question seem to be what distinguishes 'qualia' in the two stages. Is one term, especially one lacking clear definition, adequate to cover both stages in the evolution of consciousness from one level to the next? {I expect that you, like T., will say something like 'sufficiently integrated information', but that's a claim rather than a description of what happens in the organism in what I've read of Tononi so far [i.e., both of the major papers he's published about his IIT theory to date]. Perhaps I've missed the explanatory details concerning the 'qualia' he's talking about. Can you point out the relevant passages for me? Thanks.

However, I believe that other organisms - their body-self - interacts with the environment and produces a mental-self that is composed of a stream of qualia, but also - additionally - a cognitive mental-self that is able to create and make meaning via use of symbols.

The critique of IIT at this link is enlightening re the subject of symbols, language, and meaning and how they develop in conscious species:

Consciousness: So Simple, So Complex, Andy Smith

As I've said several times, I do not think Tonono has offered a full account of consciousness. And as I've already explained, he does address qualia. Indeed (as I already said) he directly addresses qualia and seeks to explain how they are produced by the brain. If you'd like, I can go back a few posts and find the response that I offered previously. However, you apparently did not find it satisfying, so I don't think that would be helpful.

Would you just link the post so I can try reading it again?

As I understand it, Tononi believes that qualia are Integrated Information.

Consider the following "scene":

There is a sea of moving particles. There is no color, sound, smell, texture, or pressure. However, within this sea of moving particles are some that are packed closer together and interacting with one another - we could call these clusters of differentiated particles "systems." All the particles in this sea are interacting with one another - bumping, colliding, and transferring energy.

Locally, there is one (relatively) large, round system of particles. On top of this large system of particles is a drastically smaller system of particles, and in front of this smaller system of particles is an again drastically smaller system.

The medium-sized system of particles is interacting with the sea of particles of which it is composed and in which it is immersed. In particular, it is interacting with the large-sized system of particles and the small-sized system of particles. These interactions with the differentiated systems produce differentiated information.

The medium-sized system of differentiated particles is able to gather the differentiated information it receives from the small-sized differentiated system of particles through the sea of particles. The medium-sized system itself is composed of many sub-systems of differentiated particles. These sub-systems filter, integrate, and interpret this information which is then integrated into a single, unified stream of Integrated Information.

This stream of Integrated Information is a beautiful, sunny, green park with a blue flower on the ground a few feet away.

The {explanatory gap} is still present but invisible in the white space between the two paragraphs I've highlighted in blue. It's the adjective 'beautiful' that signals it. Maybe Tononi can eventually fill it in. That remains to be seen.
 
from the nine point death meditation (i'm taking it one point at a time!)

"only our stream of consciousness continues, carrying imprints of all that we have thought, felt said and done."

this is an indication of consciousness continuing after death - it's the only aggregate of personality that does so ... so the story goes. - the other thing I want to post is the four jhanas - distinct states of mind that arise in meditation - this indicate a universal activity of the human mind and is considered the way to enlightenment ...


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I will post a good talk on the jhanas with descriptions and practice notes ... @Soupie posted an article that indicated meditation was an animal like state of awareness - see if the jhanas from description and experience indicate a human mind - an executive ability to dampen and enhance certain mental faculties ... I have watched my dogs and they seem pretty present but I would describe their states similar to the basic "relaxation response" than the jhana states


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"The {explanatory gap} is still present but invisible in the white space between the two paragraphs I've highlighted in blue. It's the adjective 'beautiful' that signals it. Maybe Tononi can eventually fill it in. That remains to be seen. "

that explanatory gap IS the hard problem - the most common reaction to the hard problem is to want to reject it but

it keeps us honest - to say integrated information is subjective experience is to settle for correlation / but McGinn says this is true in many areas of science - he says we shouldn't expect too much from the evolved brain (of course to be able to know we shouldn't expect too much - seems to me historically to have been the doorway to further progress ) and note this is yet another version of the argument from naturalism used by Plantinga and Nagel albeit for a total now of three different ends ... I also posted an article in wired from a few years back on big data and the end of causation in science - and we seem to be happy with that - ... another thought is to write a short story where the hard problem is solved ... and hilarious consequences ensue!


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3y5y7aqe.jpg



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@Constance

More Voices on Buddhism and Science | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog

"Now, almost exactly one century after James’s death, he might be astonished to find that scholars are debating the convergence of relativity theory, quantum mechanics and brain imaging technology with Buddhism’s anti-essentialism, its anti-metaphysical stance, and its denial of what we’d call the substantial (Cartesian) self. If Alan Wallace is right, William James’s work is not only still relevant to this ongoing dialogue, it’s just what the Doctor ordered.
There are a few technical glitches in this video from Oxford. In fact, most of the Q&A portion at the end has audio only. Also, Alan Wallace is not the most prestigious name in the field.

However, he’s probably one of the biggest William James fans I’ve ever encountered and he does a pretty good job of explaining the importance of the first-person perspective or direct phenomenological investigations – as opposed to behavioral or neurological studies, which are indirect, third-person investigations. He thinks that all three should be employed in what he calls “a three-dimensional science of the mind”.

Wallace also spends some time connecting this approach with various kinds of flourishing, connecting it with ethics and he engages with a list of possible objections to this Jamesian, introspective approach. You’ll quickly notice that Wallace’s lecture is only one of a dozen videos recorded that day in Oxford"

... I couldn't get the video to play from the link above - might be my older browser - I did find several videos on the topic on YouTube. I thought you might most be interested in the three-dimensional science of the mind.
 
@Constance

More Voices on Buddhism and Science | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog

"Now, almost exactly one century after James’s death, he might be astonished to find that scholars are debating the convergence of relativity theory, quantum mechanics and brain imaging technology with Buddhism’s anti-essentialism, its anti-metaphysical stance, and its denial of what we’d call the substantial (Cartesian) self. If Alan Wallace is right, William James’s work is not only still relevant to this ongoing dialogue, it’s just what the Doctor ordered.
There are a few technical glitches in this video from Oxford. In fact, most of the Q&A portion at the end has audio only. Also, Alan Wallace is not the most prestigious name in the field.

However, he’s probably one of the biggest William James fans I’ve ever encountered and he does a pretty good job of explaining the importance of the first-person perspective or direct phenomenological investigations – as opposed to behavioral or neurological studies, which are indirect, third-person investigations. He thinks that all three should be employed in what he calls “a three-dimensional science of the mind”.

Wallace also spends some time connecting this approach with various kinds of flourishing, connecting it with ethics and he engages with a list of possible objections to this Jamesian, introspective approach. You’ll quickly notice that Wallace’s lecture is only one of a dozen videos recorded that day in Oxford"

... I couldn't get the video to play from the link above - might be my older browser - I did find several videos on the topic on YouTube. I thought you might most be interested in the three-dimensional science of the mind.

James and Whitehead {"Process Philosophy"} have both been recognized as proto-phenomenologists. James presented some very illuminating lectures on his developing concept of consciousness in the last few years of his life, later published in two books entitles Essays in Radical Empiricism and A Pluralist Universe. Merleau-Ponty read and cited these works and stated that he was heavily influenced by them. Reading them, even just reading the first essay from the first-named volume above (available in a typescript at the link below) immensely clarifies the interdependent, intertwined, relationship of 'consciousness' and 'things' in phenomenological philosophy. James was a brilliant thinker who reached the later insights of his thinking out of the preceding decades of his psychological and philosophical investigations. His Varieties of Religious Experience is probably essential reading for those involved in this thread, and his years of involvement in psychical research with the SPR in England and the US further extended the reach of his mind into aspects of human experience not yet investigated by institutional science. He saw and understood too much about the varieties of conscious experience over the length of his career to remain subject to dualistic interpretations of mind and world. I recommend reading at least the first of these lectures, "Does Consciousness Exist?", at this link.

Essays in Radical Empiricism - William James - Philosophy Archive
 
Look what I found ...

LibriVox

makes me happy, so you know I will be listening to "Does Consciousness Exist?" - probably tonight. I agree VoRE is required reading ... I need to go back and re-read portions of this ... or listen to it.

I think it's a pretty good catalog of the range of human experience - one of the first places to go to if you have a question about a person experience.
 
Tononi uses the term 'qualia' but I still have not found a clear description of what he's talking about in using the term. If you can quote the passage were you find such a description, would you do that when you get a chance? Thanks.
Consciousness and the Paranormal
Also, does he characterize the point in evolution where he thinks organisms that have "Subjective Experience AKA Phenomenal Consciousness" also develop the capacity to become "a mental-self," which you (or Tononi?) define as follows: "All this mental-self is composed of is a stream of qualia."
I can't speak for Tononi, but I would say that as soon as an organism begins producing/experiencing qualia - no matter how basic - they have a mental-self.
The question seem to be what distinguishes 'qualia' in the two stages. Is one term, especially one lacking clear definition, adequate to cover both stages in the evolution of consciousness from one level to the next?
As noted above, I don't agree/see the need for such "stages of qualia."

Once an organism generates/experiences qualia - no matter how basic - I would say that organism (body-self) can be said to have a mind (mental-self).

Now, whether that organism is self-aware or possesses a reflexive consciousness is a whole other matter that Tononi does not address. But I don't think an organism must possess reflexive consciousness to generate/experience qualia. That was the whole point of the long, excellent MIT article I posted awhile back which was inconclusive.

{I expect that you, like T., will say something like 'sufficiently integrated information', but that's a claim rather than a description of what happens in the organism in what I've read of Tononi so far [i.e., both of the major papers he's published about his IIT theory to date]. Perhaps I've missed the explanatory details concerning the 'qualia' he's talking about. Can you point out the relevant passages for me? Thanks.
I think you have missed the details. I suggest reading his papers again.

Tononi is suggesting that the process of discriminating vast amounts of information is the process of qualia generation.
Tononi: Perhaps the most important notion emerging from this approach is that an experience is a shape in Q. According to the IIT, this shape completely and univocally specifies the quality of experience. It follows that different experiences are, literally, different shapes in Q.
Has Tononi proven this via biological or artificial experiments? Not that I'm aware of. I hope that someone is working on it though.

Again, I've never argued that Tononi has provided a complete description of consciousness, but he has provided an interesting theory about the nature of phenomenal consciousness.

The {explanatory gap} is still present but invisible in the white space between the two paragraphs I've highlighted in blue. It's the adjective 'beautiful' that signals it. Maybe Tononi can eventually fill it in. That remains to be seen.
I'm not arguing that Tononi has closed the gap. Right now he has offered a theory, one which needs more refining and application to practice and experimentation.

Because qualia - and the experience of qualia - happen "invisibly" it will be incredibly difficult to study this phenomena. The fact that a system might produce/generate qualia but lack the mental faculties to report that they are experiencing qualia makes things even more difficult. For instance, when does a zygote begin experiencing qualia? At conception, as a fetus, at the 2nd trimester, at 3 months? I'd imagine it occurs somewhere in that timeline and pretty early on, but there will be no way for the developing baby to report this. It's not different with any other "system," biological or otherwise.

I know what you mean about the adjective beautiful. However, that doesn't signal the explanatory gap. The gap is between the objective and the subjective -

[R]ight now there is much philosophical discussion about whether subjective experience can be explained via physical, objective processes at all. Tononi says yes, it can be. He is saying that subjective experience is integrated information. However, neither he nor anyone else has proven this yet.

But so far as I know, no one has proven him wrong either. I haven't even heard a convincing case of why he might be wrong. I haven't seen one reason why subjective experience couldn't be integrated information. Keep in mind that some people don't believe the gap exists at all.

How do we "go" from information processed in the visual cortex to "the experience" of the color green!? Uh, maybe there isn't anywhere to go... Maybe the information processed in the visual cortex is the experience of the color green!

As I say, our universe could be awash with systems that generate subjective experience, and I think it probably is.

Chalmers said IIT was interesting but didn't answer the hard problem. Remember that part of Chalmers problem is not only how but why. (Now, I'm not saying that Chalmers agrees it answers the how though either.) IIT doesn't tell us why integrated information would manifest as phenomenal experience.

At the end of the day, what I can say is that I believe that phenomenal consciousness correlates to physical organisms (systems). My guess is that in the process of interacting and exchanging information with the environment, subjective experience is generated. I say it is "generated" because I don't think it would exist otherwise. I think Tononi's concept of how this process works is the most interesting I've seen.

Reality > Organisms > Information > Phenomenal Experience

If others want to believe that "the experience of the color green" is not related to information processing, an illusion, or composed of an eternal, non-physical material/process, that's fine with me.
 
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James and Whitehead {"Process Philosophy"} have both been recognized as proto-phenomenologists. James presented some very illuminating lectures on his developing concept of consciousness in the last few years of his life, later published in two books entitles Essays in Radical Empiricism and A Pluralist Universe. Merleau-Ponty read and cited these works and stated that he was heavily influenced by them. Reading them, even just reading the first essay from the first-named volume above (available in a typescript at the link below) immensely clarifies the interdependent, intertwined, relationship of 'consciousness' and 'things' in phenomenological philosophy. James was a brilliant thinker who reached the later insights of his thinking out of the preceding decades of his psychological and philosophical investigations. His Varieties of Religious Experience is probably essential reading for those involved in this thread, and his years of involvement in psychical research with the SPR in England and the US further extended the reach of his mind into aspects of human experience not yet investigated by institutional science. He saw and understood too much about the varieties of conscious experience over the length of his career to remain subject to dualistic interpretations of mind and world. I recommend reading at least the first of these lectures, "Does Consciousness Exist?", at this link.

Essays in Radical Empiricism - William James - Philosophy Archive

I listened to Does Consciousness Exist? this morning

audio here: LibriVox
text here: Essays in Radical Empiricism by William James - Free Ebook

"But a last cry of non possumus will probably go up from many readers. “All very pretty as a piece of ingenuity,” they will say, “but our consciousness itself intuitively contradicts you. We, for our part, know that we are conscious. We feel our thought, flowing as a life within us, in absolute contrast with the objects which it so unremittingly escorts. We can not be faithless to this immediate intuition. The dualism is a fundamental datum: Let no man join what God has put asunder.”

My reply to this is my last word, and I greatly grieve that to many it will sound materialistic. I can not help that, however, for I, too, have my intuitions and I must obey them. Let the case be what it may in others, I am as confident as I am of anything that, in[24] but breath, which was ever the original of ‘spirit,’ breath moving outwards, between the glottis and the nostrils, is, I am persuaded, the essence out of which philosophers have constructed the entity known to them as consciousness. That entity is fictitious, while thoughts in the concrete are fully real. But thoughts in the concrete are made of the same stuff as things are.

I wish I might believe myself to have made that plausible in this article. In another article I shall try to make the general notion of a world composed of pure experiences still more clear."

Let the case be what it may in others, I am as confident as I am of anything that, in but breath, which was ever the original of ‘spirit,’ breath moving outwards, between the glottis and the nostrils, is, I am persuaded, the essence out of which philosophers have constructed the entity known to them as consciousness. That entity is fictitious, while thoughts in the concrete are fully real. But thoughts in the concrete are made of the same stuff as things are.

… looks like James met the Buddha on the road but forgot to kill him! ;-)

I plan to listen to the rest of the lectures:

A World of Pure Experience
The Thing and its Relations
How Two Minds Can Know One Thing
The Place of Affectional Facts in a World of Pure Experience
The Experience of Activity
The Essence of Humanism
The Notion of Consciousness (English)
Is Radical Empiricism Solipsistic?
Mr Pitkin’s Refutation
Humanism and Truth Once More
Absolutism and Empiricism
Controversy About Truth
 
@smcder 2. what views would be incompatible with reflexive monism?

The view that the mind is made of a different substance than the rest of the natural world and thus can't be explained to arise/originate via natural processes.

@smcder Other than parsimony, what principle says we shouldn't suspect this claim as being philosophical convenient? Why not 33 things?

For me it does boil down to parsimony: 1) I see no reason for there to be more than one substance, and 2) I'm not sure how two different substances would interact unless they had a common origin. For example, information may have the dual properties of physicalness (mass) and mentalness (experience).

@smcder How are you using the word "mystify" here? We may have another problem of terminology ...

One of the ideas that I've suggested is that the mental-self doesn't experience Greenish, but that the mental-self is Greenish.

I think that's from where some of the confusion and mysteriousness arises. "How does my mental-self experience Greenish?" That's the wrong question. Your mental-self isn't experiencing Greenish, your mental-self is composed of Greenish.

Now, there are other "parts" of our conscious mind that can "access" or "look at" the Greenish part of our mind, and this is what I consider our Reflexive Consciousness.

I believe Chalmers once remarked that they real problem isn't Mind-Body but rather Cognition-Phenomenal. That is, how can our cognition interact with our experiences? Back to good old monism for me: if cognitive consciousness and phenomenal consciousness are essentially made of the same stuff, that explains how they can see each other. To me, that's a clue that our mind - while modular - is all made of the same stuff. Currently, I believe the "stuff" is Uniquely Integrated Information which has the ontologically new property of subjective experience.

For all we know, the universe may be awash with systems experiencing subjective phenomenal consciousness who may lack the ability or desire to communicate with other systems.

For me it does boil down to parsimony: 1) I see no reason for there to be more than one substance, and 2) I'm not sure how two different substances would interact unless they had a common origin. For example, information may have the dual properties of physicalness (mass) and mentalness (experience).

This is where my knowledge ends and my questions begin …

Could two different substances have a common origin? What do we mean by stuff or substance? (see matter below) Why couldn't two different substances interact? (we have to have a definition of different here - for that matter do any two things actually exist that don't interact?) And if parsimony is the main thing - one substance with two properties seems … we'll maybe even more complicated than two simple substances … and how do the two different properties co-exist in one substance much less interact … ? This approach doesn't seem to generate any fewer questions. Again, I think we might be suspicious of parsimony itself as a likely function of an evolved brain rather than a basic principle of reality. As far as any of us know - reality can be as complex as it wants to be and owes nothing to our convenience - and from at least the popular image of quantum mechanics that I have absorbed, that seems to be the case. I looked up electrons, protons and neutrons:

The electron (symbol: e−) is a subatomic particle with a negative elementary electric charge.[8] Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family,[9] and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no known components or substructure.[2]

In the modern Standard Model of particle physics, the proton is a hadron, and like the neutron, the other nucleon (particle present in atomic nuclei), is composed of three quarks. Prior to that model becoming a consensus in the physics community, the proton was considered a fundamental particle. In the modern view, a proton is composed of three valence quarks: two up quarks and one down quark. The rest masses of the quarks are thought to contribute only about 1% of the proton's mass. The remainder of the proton mass is due to the kinetic energy of the quarks and to the energy of the gluon fields that bind the quarks together.

The neutron is a hadron:

In particle physics, a hadroni/ˈhædrɒn/ (Greek: ἁδρός, hadrós, "stout, thick") is a composite particle made of quarksheld together by the strong force (in a similar way as molecules are held together by the electromagnetic force).

The quark is considered elementary … and the anti-quark

The photon is also elementary:

A photon is an elementary particle, the quantum of light and all other forms of electromagnetic radiation, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force, even when static via virtual photons. The effects of this force are easily observable at both the microscopic and macroscopic level, because the photon has zero rest mass; this allows long distance interactions. Like all elementary particles, photons are currently best explained by quantum mechanics and exhibit wave–particle duality, exhibiting properties of both waves and particles. For example, a single photon may be refracted by a lens or exhibit wave interference with itself, but also act as a particle giving a definite result when its position is measured.

… so now we have duality again - one particle acting like waves and particles …

anti-particles:

The laws of nature are very nearly symmetrical with respect to particles and antiparticles. For example, an antiproton and a positron can form an antihydrogenatom, which has almost exactly the same properties as a hydrogen atom. This leads to the question of why the formation of matter after the Big Bang resulted in a universe consisting almost entirely of matter, rather than being a half-and-half mixture of matter and antimatter. The discovery of CP violation("CP" denotes "Charge Parity") helped to shed light on this problem by showing that this symmetry, originally thought to be perfect, was only approximate.

so, now we don't have symmetry …

When I had a look at matter and acceding to wikipedia, it is not a fundamental concept in physics today ...

Before the 20th century, the term matter included ordinary matter composed of atoms, and excluded other energy phenomena such as light or sound. This concept of matter may be generalized from atoms to include any objects having mass even when at rest, but this is ambiguous because an object's mass can arise from its (possibly-massless) constituents' motion and interaction energies. Thus, matter does not have a universal definition, nor is it a fundamental concept, in physics today. Matter is also used loosely as a general term for the substance that makes up all observable physical objects.[1][2]



Different fields of science use the term matter in different, and sometimes incompatible, ways. Some of these ways are based on loose historical meanings, from a time when there was no reason to distinguish mass and matter. As such, there is no single universally agreed scientific meaning of the word "matter." Scientifically, the term "mass" is well-defined, but "matter" is not. Sometimes in the field of physics "matter" is simply equated with particles that exhibit rest mass (i.e., that cannot travel at the speed of light), such as quarks and leptons. However, in both physics and chemistry, matter exhibits both wave-like and particle-like properties, the so-called wave–particle duality.[8][9][10]

… I haven't looked at the rest of this, but there are also forces and fields - how does gravity act on mass? What is gravity?

In the decades after the discovery of general relativity it was realized that general relativity is incompatible with quantum mechanics.[18] It is possible to describe gravity in the framework of quantum field theory like the other fundamental forces, such that the attractive force of gravity arises due to exchange of virtual gravitons, in the same way as the electromagnetic force arises from exchange of virtual photons.[19][20] This reproduces general relativity in the classical limit. However, this approach fails at short distances of the order of the Planck length,[18] where a more complete theory of quantum gravity (or a new approach to quantum mechanics) is required.

Quantum Gravity is a whole field of theoretical physics itself:

Quantum gravity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

… so again, where is parsimony? What do we save by folding two different properties into one substance when there doesn't seem to be one substance out there … which elementary particles carry consciousness - Tegmark proposes perceptronium but maybe that's a by product of quantum intuition of thinking as if reality were encompassed by quantum mechanics, and that may be no more right - in fact I wager it won't be any more right than trying to fit everything into a Newtonian framework. QM has pushed us to step outside of the embodied metaphors of cognition and embrace a really weird world … we may have to do that again and again and again … the amazing thing is that we do seem capable of true abstract thought in this sense, as I understand it, there is nothing intuitive about quantum mechanics - we rely on mathematics (and how do we do mathematics - how does a physical brain do that? I've had not answer to this question but I think there is going to be no escaping it.
 
Tononi and qualia ... one other point that we've not kicked around, because there is not much to say - but there is currently no practical way to calculate Phi.

Conscious Entities » Integrated Information Theory

"... Tononi has in fact gone much further than this: in a paper with David Balduzzi he suggested the notion of qualia space. The idea here is that unique patterns of neuronal activation define unique subjective experiences. There is some sophisticated maths going on here to define qualia space, far beyond my clear comprehension; yet I feel confident that it’s all misguided. In the first place, qualia are not patterns of neuronal activation; the word was defined precisely to identify those aspects of experience which are over and above simple physics; the defining text of Mary the colour scientist is meant to tell us that whatever qualia are, they are not information. You may want to reject that view; you may want to say that in the end qualia are just aspects of neuron firing; but you can’t have that conclusion as an assumption. To take it as such is like writing an alchemical text which begins: “OK, so this lead is gold; now here are some really neat ways to shape it up into ingots."

And alas, that’s not all. The idea of qualia space, if I’ve understood it correctly, rests on the idea that subjective experience can be reduced to combinations of activation along a number of different axes. We know that colour can be reduced to the combination of three independent values (though experienced colour is of course a large can of worms which I will not open here) ; maybe experience as a whole just needs more scales of value. Well, probably not. Many people have tried to reduce the scope of human thought to an orderly categorisation: encyclopediae; Dewey’s decimal index; and the international customs tariff to name but three; and it never works without capacious ‘other’ categories. I mean, read Borges, dude:

...

The metaphor of ‘x-space’ is only useful where you can guarantee that the interesting features of x are exhausted and exemplified by linear relationships; and that’s not the case with experience. Think of a large digital TV screen: we can easily define a space of all possible pictures by simply mapping out all possible values of each pixel. Does that exhaust television? Does it even tell us anything useful about the relationship of one picture to another? Does the set of frames from Coronation Street describe an intelligible trajectory through screen space? I may be missing the point, but it seems to me it’s not that simple."
 
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